The non-logo exposure group has no idea what they're in for & gets a pristine scene from nature or beautiful music to listen to, so they're generally happy.

The dual-exposure group gets "here's the corporate-logo-feces of your overlords who are ruining society by poisoning the masses, influencing the government, and making your children love them"...now look at a pristine scene from nature (soon we'll build a new McBarfbag's here),or listen to this music (which will soon be drown out by the sound of our deep fryers & microwave ovens).

I have a McD's 1 mile from my home. When the wind direction is right you can smell the burgers(?) being cooked. Maybe the pink slime they used, when heated and released into the atmosphere causes bouts of batsh*t crazy......

Okay, I was all set to trash the first study for income-related noise, but I actually pulled up the full journal article.

Consistent with the findings of Quoidbach, Dunn, Petrides, and Mikolajczak (2010), greater income was negatively correlated with savoring but unrelated to dampening tendencies. Critical for our hypothesis, greater fast-food concentration in one's neighborhood exhibited a parallel relationship. To test the robustness of these associations, we conducted regression analyses in which the log of both predictor variables were entered in Step 1, and variables controlling for participants' age and neighborhood population and median income were entered in Step 2.2 In this analysis, both neighborhood fast-food restaurant concentration, β = −.14, t(262) = −2.25, p = .025, and participants' income, β = −.15, t(262) = −2.41, p = .017, emerged as significant predictors that remained significant in the presence of control variables, β = −.14, t(259) = −2.22, p = .027, β = −.15, t(259) = −2.31, p = .022, respectively.

So, increased income actually correlates with decreased "savoring". That's kind of interesting. I'll have to look up that other study to see what it says; I wonder if there's some kind of "increased materialism" that happens with increased earnings for the average person. I also wonder if this is something one could correlate to parental income/childhood lifestyle - e.g., seeing if there's a difference between those born to higher incomes vs those who worked their way up. Could be a confounding factor.

For the second study: seeing nature pictures instead of fast food advertising was highest, but seeing nature pictures *and* fast food advertising was the lowest. I wonder if it's the juxtaposition of nature vs. advertising that causes the decrease - a subconscious comparison of accessibility or something. (Note that they tested with non-labeled fast food vs McD's labeled fast food; the non-labeled was the "control", so they were explicitly testing the advertising component.)

I'm not sure the article accurately reflects their conclusions; they seem to be showing results vs advertising in general, not results vs. fast food itself (again, burgers and fries were shown as a control - just not labeled).